The Romanian National Bank has a forex reserve nearly double ashigh as Romania's short-term external debt, and can be consideredexcessive when compared with that of other central banks in theregion, after having received nearly 10 billion euros from theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) in the past two years via anarrangement concluded precisely out of fear that the reserve maynot be high enough to cover the debt in case of an externalshock.
The reserve became so big that, all of a sudden, the NBR decidedit no longer wanted money from the IMF, so Romania will not drawthe last 1 billion-euro instalment of the loan. In other words, theloan taken out proved to be bigger than needed, especially since3.5 billion euros went straight into the budget instead of goinginto the NBR's reserve. But it is still the NBR who will have topay back the money taken out from the IMF.
"As far as forex reserves are concerned, things have been good forsome time. The reserves have been kept at this level in order tocalm the financial markets, which had become too jittery," commentsfinancial analyst Aurelian Dochia. He believes aside from the highlevel of forex reserves, the last instalment of the IMF loan was nolonger important also because economic forecasts point to aneconomic improvement in 2011.
The NBR reserves amounted to around 35.9 billion euros at the endof January, which includes the 3.2 billion-euro value of the 103.7tonnes of gold.
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